A 95-year-old woman, former secretary in a concentration camp during World War II, faces trial for complicity in murder before German justice.

But the holding of a trial is not yet certain: justice must first decide whether, because of her great age, this woman is suitable to be sent to court.

This is a first in German judicial history.

Former secretary in a concentration camp, a 95-year-old woman is now facing trial for complicity in murder before German justice.

If brought to trial, she would be the first woman to appear in the most recent proceedings in Germany to try Nazi atrocities, as several men have been prosecuted. 

"Complicity in murders in more than 10,000 cases"

The indictment charges her with "complicity in murder in more than 10,000 cases. In other cases, she is prosecuted for complicity in attempted murders," writes the Itzehoe prosecutor's office, located in the northwest. from Germany, in a statement.

The prosecution accuses him of having between June 1943 and April 1945 "provided assistance to those responsible for the systematic massacre of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Russian Soviet prisoners of war in his function as stenographer and secretary to the commander of the former Stutthof concentration camp ", located 40 km from the city of Gdansk, now in Poland. 

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Facts that this woman, whose identity remains secret, does not deny, according to the German television channel

NDR

who met her last year.

She even vividly remembers her activities in a building opposite the camp.

But she claims to have never entered the latter, and that her office was facing in the opposite direction.

On the other hand, and she has already had the opportunity to tell the courts on several occasions as a witness in other trials, she was responsible for typing all the administrative documents of the camp and the correspondence. of the commander with his SS hierarchy. 

As for the acts of execution she typed, she believed they were related to internal disciplinary measures in the camp.

Likewise, she maintains that she learned only after the war of the existence of the gas chambers in the Stutthof camp, where 65,000 people died. 

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Whether a trial will be held is uncertain

However, the holding of a trial is not yet certain: the courts must first decide whether, due to her great age, the former employee of the camp is fit to be brought before a court.

Questioned by AFP, the public prosecutor currently assumes that she is "fit to stand trial".

The investigations in this case were "very long", with questioning of witnesses in the United States and in Israel in particular, specified the spokesman of the public prosecutor's office Peter Müller-Rakow.

The "central legal question" of the procedure will be the question of the "concrete responsibility" of the accused for complicity in the murders with which she is accused.

This can only be clarified "during the hearing of witnesses" in court, he added.

In 1957, its leader, the camp commander, was caught by the courts and sentenced to prison.

But the case of his secretary had been left out.

"She was at the bottom of the chain of command for the Holocaust," admits the lawyer for the camp survivors, "but she was still part of it."